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College Classes On Your iPod?
By Matt Misselbeck | June 11, 2007
Not content with merely being at the forefront of the digital music revolution, Apple now wants to extend its dominance into the educational community. If the company has its way, students at campuses all over the country won’t just be listening to music on those ever-present iPods, they’ll be listening to a class lecture, a language lesson, or other teaching material. The company just launched iTunes U, an educational version of its iTunes music store, and already offers academic content available from some of the top universities in the country, including Stanford, Duke, and MIT.
Do you want to take a course on the Geography of World Cultures from Stanford? You don’t have to register and pay tuition. You can just download the lectures, and listen to it as if you were sitting right there in class. While some of these courses offer audio only, others are set up much like a distance learning course, with handouts and even assignments.
As for local schools, Seattle Pacific University provides the most material for download on iTunes U. The school offers academic content in a wide variety, including lectures, chapel services, and performances from campus musical and creative groups. They even allow faculty and students to post independent content, leveraging the technology to promote community.
David Wicks, director of instructional technology services at the school, says the school has been digitizing their content for over five years, and saw the widespread use of iTunes as a viable distribution system. “We’re very in much in favor of open source,” Wicks said. “Not everyone has the opportunity to come to campus to engage in the conversation about important ideas.” So far, the reaction has been positive. The university averages over 1,000 downloads a month.
Whether or not this technology truly democratizes education remains to be seen, but media like iTunes U is certainly making academic resources available to more people, in more ways, than ever before. “We’ve seen where some people start to rely on it,” Wicks said. “They’ll miss an event and call us wanting to know when we are going to post it.”
You can check out iTunes U for yourself at the following sites:
Topics: Reviews |